Former nanny reveals Jackson’s drug, financial problems

LOS ANGELES/LONDON - Michael Jackson’s former child minder has spoken of how she regularly had to pump the late pop singer’s stomach to remove the dangerous drug cocktails he took, in an interview published in Britain.

Grace Rwaramba, 42, who worked as a nanny to Jackson’s three children until last December, gave a rare insight into the singer’s drug and financial problems in an interview published in the Sunday Times in London.

“I had to pump his stomach many times. He always mixed so much of it,” she said of the various drugs Jackson had taken.

“There was one period that it was so bad that I didn’t let the children see him… He always ate too little and mixed too much,” Rwaramba said.

She said that at one point she had turned to the singer’s mother and one of his sisters, asking them to intervene.

Rwaramba also gave details of nomadic lifestyle that took him from country to country and of his falling under the increasing influence of the extremist Notion of Islam sect.

Rwaramba, an employee in the Jackson household for 17 years, flew out of London to join the Jackson family in Los Angeles Saturday, the Sunday Times said.

“He didn’t want to listen; that was one of the times he let me go,” she said.

Rwaramba was dismissed last December but has since had contact with the children, according to the newspaper.

On one occasion in April, she said, Jackson was so poor that she had to buy balloons for his daughter’s birthday.

Her revelations came as Los Angeles police confirmed they had questioned Jackson’s private doctor, Conrad Murray, who had attended to the pop star in his dying hours Thursday.

Details of the three-hour police interview were not known. Police reportedly told the media in a statement only that the doctor had been cooperative.

Jackson’s relatives have meanwhile been unable to contact Murray to learn about the singer’s final hours, according to US civil rights activist Jesse Jackson. The family was growing increasingly upset as a result, he said.

Late Saturday, a pathologist hired by the family conducted a second autopsy on the singer’s body, the Los Angeles Times reported on its website.